The invention relates to electrical connectors of the type made up of two plug components having the form of a jack and a plug insertable into the jack. One of the two plug components is provided with circumferentially distributed resilient contact wires which extend longitudinally of the plug component but bulge in radial direction into electrical contact with the other, cooperating one of the plug components. The contact wires are actually sections of a long wire. These wire sections at the ends thereof continue into curved wire sections, with the wire as a whole following a meandering path to form a resilient wire mat. The wire mat is rolled up to form a cylinder, and fixed in place on the associated one of the plug components by clamping.
A connector utilizing a resilient wire mat is disclosed in my Federal Republic of German patent DT-PS No. 1,263,893. The patent teaches a one-layer rolled-up resilient contact wire mat. The rolled-up wire mat extends axially substantially without bends. At its two axial ends, in the region of the curved wire sections, the wire mat is fixed in place on the associated plug component by respective clamping rings and compressed in axial direction, in order to create the radial inward or outward bulge necessary to establish electrical contact with the other one of the cooperating plug components.
The production of this known connector is effected in the following way. The resilient contact wire mat is originally flat or planar, and the curved end sections connecting together adjoining, parallel straight sections of the contact wire lie in the general plane of the mat. When the wire mat is then rolled-up to form a cylinder, there is imparted to such curved end sections of the contact wire an additional curve, relative to the axis of the cylinder, so that the curve in these end sections is no longer a planar curve, but a three-dimensional curve. This is done to assure that the rolled-up mat will retain its cylindrical shape and not tend to return to its original flat shape. This technique is resorted to with the idea of facilitating assembly, and also is intended to prevent improper disposition of the wire mat in the finished article or improper positioning of its individual sections relative to one another.
The known construction, although advantageous in many respects, is disadvantageous in others. The three-dimensional curvature permanently imparted to the connecting sections at the ends of the parallel major sections of the wire requires an additional working step. Additionally, each end of the rolled-up wire mat must be clamped or fixed in place by means of clamping rings, which is likewise costly. Furthermore, the known construction tends to be expensive because the one of the plug components provided with the wire mat must be a component which extends over the full axial length of the wire mat and which, additionally, must have a multiple-diameter peripheral surface, which must be formed using a lathe, or the like.
Finally, experience has also shown that production errors tend to result with the known construction. In the rolled-up wire mat, the generally straight wire sections do not extend parallel to one another; instead, two adjoining straight sections of the wire, spaced apart from each other at one end due to the presence of the curved connecting section, will at their other ends touch each other. This inclined orientation of the generally straight sections of the wire can lead to improper twisting of the wire sections or to pushing of wire sections one over the other.
I have considered the possibility of making a connector utilizing discrete resilient contact wires arranged to bulge radially outward, with these discrete wires being clamped in place only at the inner end of the plug, by means of a copper sleeve pushed over them and squashed in. The outer ends of the contact wires would then be bent inwardly around and hooked into an annular groove in an axial end face of the plug. This would involve only a single clamping operation for fixing the contact wires in place. However, the assembly of such a construction would require a complicated apparatus for properly orienting the individual wires, including an assembling ring having a grooved peripheral surface. Even with this possibility, it would still be the case that the one-piece plug component carrying the wire mat would have to be lathed over the whole length of the plug in order to have the requisite profile for holding the wire mat.